1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to golf club manufacturing and assembly and, more specifically, to the alignment and support of club shafts and club heads during inductive curing processes for securing club heads onto club shafts.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A critical step in the manufacture of golf clubs is the assembly of the club head onto the club shaft. A well understood prior technique for reliably achieving a suitable, secure bond between the club head and the club shaft is to apply an epoxy adhesive to the shaft and/or the club head, hold the club head in place on the shaft, and the adhesive on the joint is cured through an ambient/chemical reaction.
In order to achieve desirable uniformity in graphics and aesthetics among all golf clubs in a given correlated set of clubs, it is necessary to repeatedly locate each club shaft of the set with precisely the same orientation relative to each complementary club head. One known technique for maintaining uniform orientation of shafts and club heads throughout a set of golf clubs was to first locate and mark the seam of the club shaft, and then place the seam of each shaft in a similar predetermined orientation relative to each club head. Such a technique was described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,958,834. However, with the advent of modern graphite and synthetic composite material golf club shafts, such a technique is obsolete because a vast majority of golf club shafts today are seamless.
Even with seamless shafts, it is still desirable to consistently orient club shafts with respect to club heads to maintain cosmetic, visual uniformity in a set of golf clubs. Many commercial golf club shafts feature graphics printed in some acceptable manner, such as by silk screening. Several examples of typical graphics include brand names, corporate trademarks, logos, sponsors' names, model name of the particular line of clubs, a replica of a celebrity endorser's autograph signature, shaft type (like graphite, steel, or titanium), and the performance characteristic (e.g. regular, stiff, extra stiff, ladies, senior, or lite), to name a few. In addition, for security and identification purposes a set of golf clubs can be personalized with an individual golfer's name or monogram preprinted on the shafts. It is preferable that such graphics on each shaft appear to a golfer in a consistent orientation relative to each club head in a given set of clubs so as not to distract the golfer when any particular club in the set is held at address.
While currently the United States Golf Association requires a shaft's performance be consistent regardless of its orientation relative to the club head, if that changes in the future, the present invention allows specific alignment of such a non-uniform club shaft to a club head.